Show newer

Culture war (transgender) 

In the spirit of "fronting the 'of course' a little more" as Freddie deBoer puts it ( freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/p ):

I believe trans people should be free to live their lives as their identified gender and receive the healthcare they need (and I don't just mean gender-affirming care; this also extends to things like gynecological care for trans men which from my understanding can be a struggle). Trans people deserve the same protections against discrimination as others do with regards to sex and gender and they absolutely do not deserve harassment, ostracism, and violence simply for identifying in a particular way.

Show thread

Culture war (transgender) 

"I won't speak for the conservative critics who don't believe trans people are real. I think one of the main concerns among the liberal critics is the conflict between multiple frames of trans acceptance." old.reddit.com/r/IntellectualD

The portion about the second frame/paradigm is worth highlighting. If we don't want to limit the concept of transgender to those who experience gender dysphoria (which I don't), then I think we need to consider that just *maybe* gender identities, including transgender identities, are influenced by societal concepts of gender including, yes, gender roles. And I do recognize that that conflicts with the ideal of removing gender roles and stereotypes, but until we live in some sort of "post-gender" society this is going to be a point of contention.

From another comment in the thread: "Anyway, that's about 8 paragraphs of saying, 'I think we're reinforcing stereotypes here'." old.reddit.com/r/IntellectualD

Why in the world does a public transit agency, one that has its own website, put a Linktree link in its Twitter profile??

I just noticed that I mentioned an "update" without actually explaining what I was referring to. It's the update to my latest Tumblr post: collectedoverspread.tumblr.com

Maybe you can appreciate why I'd like to give it some more separation.

Things I Hate About the Internet: When the Internet Archive Can’t Archive

When I find something posted on the Web that seems important, one of the first things I do is to check if it’s in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Fortunately, sometimes it’s already there. Unfortunately, sometimes the actual content isn’t saved. The early days of the Web were simple. If you wanted to save a page, all you had to do was download it, find any external resources it needed (like images), and download those as well. Nowadays, though, you’ll often find that that only gets you so far. Instead of the actual content, you might get: A login page: Of course, websites that require a login aren’t new, but there seems to be a trend of “locking down” social-media sites that were previously public. Twitter is a prime example of this: It used to be very easy to archive, but after Musk’s takeover it’s hit-or-miss at best. Some sites, like Facebook, aren’t strictly login-only but will require a login when you submit them to the Internet Archive. Both of these sites are used to publish statements of cultural significance, so it’s quite disheartening to think that they can’t be archived easily. (Update [5 June 2024]: I’d like to highlight Google Docs as well, because it’s another place where people publish culturally significant statements, and also because there’s an easy way to make it much easier to archive. Google Docs doesn’t require a login when you submit a document to the Internet Archive, but it often shows an error message that prevents you from reading the document. If you share something on Google Docs, consider using the “publish to Web” feature, which will make it much easier to archive. Note that this is not the same as simply sharing a link to a public document. The “publish to Web” URL will end in “/pubhtml” rather than “/edit”.) A blank or partial page with code to load the actual content: I remember when “progressive enhancement” was a thing and “people who turn off JavaScript in their browser” was a demographic that websites actually took into account. This idea seems to be dying off though, and the ability to archive pages is suffering as a result. The Internet Archive says it can run JavaScript to archive pages, but this doesn’t always work. Bluesky is a great example of this: You can view posts without logging in, but if you try to archive a public post all you get is a sort of “loading” screen (although the text of the post is in the source code at least). Its blog does this weird thing where you have to click in order for the content to show up. (Incidentally, archive.today handles both of these a lot better, so consider making it your first choice for archiving Bluesky posts.) A media player without the media: This is actually a specific case of the previous item. If you try to archive the page for a YouTube video, for example, all you’ll get is the player which uses JavaScript to load the actual video data. The Wayback Machine actually does have some YouTube videos archived, but those are few and far between and it’s clearly some extra process (although the process itself isn’t clear to me). I will point out that the Internet Archive’s video collections also have some YouTube videos, but these are separate from the Wayback Machine and not quite as simple to search for. Now, to be fair, a lot of the Web is still the kind that you can archive easily. But it’s not a coincidence that all of the examples I gave are from major social-media sites; many of them are particularly unsuitable for archiving. It’s frustrating that much of what happens online takes place on these platforms, without any good way to preserve it.

Tumblr
Show thread

US (California) politics 

One thing I'm curious about is service charges specifically for large parties, which some reporting (e.g. latimes.com/food/story/2024-02 ) suggests would also need to be included in the advertised price.

I actually feel like this should be considered a fee for an optional service (in the words of the AG's guidance), that is, the service of waiting on/serving a large group of customers. Consider this: If you were a glutton and ordered ten dishes for yourself, in theory you wouldn't have to pay that charge, whereas a group of ten who ordered the same dishes would have to.

If the exemption doesn't pass, I'd like to see more specific guidance from the AG on this.

Show thread

US (California) politics 

"California lawmakers fast-track restaurant exemption to hidden fees law" by Dan Walters (@DanCALmatters@twitter.com) in CalMatters calmatters.org/commentary/2024

I've been following the developments around since restaurants started complaining about the AG's guidance FAQ from May, and I truly do not understand why they believe they deserve this special treatment. (Okay, I know why they're *advocating* for this treatment, but the arguments themselves don't make a lot of sense.) Yes, we know restaurants have thin margins and high labor costs, but the way to respond to increased costs is to raise prices (gasp!), just like virtually every other business does.

Is it just me or has totally nerfed the HTML support in posts? I can get over forcing <em> and <strong> into <i> and <b> (I think this has been a thing for a long time, and everyone gets it wrong anyway)...

But now I can't even add a sublist under a list item (it just gets flatted down to one big list), or even a second paragraph within an item! The update is just so awkwardly placed now.

@eff I think this shows, once again, that the problem with is less that it's automated systems aren't perfect than that it's appeals processes are ineffective. It seems like sometimes the only effective appeal is to make a big enough stink on social media, which not everyone can do.

"Things I Hate About the Internet: When the Can't Archive," expressing my frustration about cases where the fails to archive things (especially on sites) collectedoverspread.tumblr.com

Things I Hate About the Internet: When the Internet Archive Can’t Archive

When I find something posted on the Web that seems important, one of the first things I do is to check if it’s in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Fortunately, sometimes it’s already there. Unfortunately, sometimes the actual content isn’t saved. The early days of the Web were simple. If you wanted to save a page, all you had to do was download it, find any external resources it needed (like images), and download those as well. Nowadays, though, you’ll often find that that only gets you so far. Instead of the actual content, you might get: A login page: Of course, websites that require a login aren’t new, but there seems to be a trend of “locking down” social-media sites that were previously public. Twitter is a prime example of this: It used to be very easy to archive, but after Musk’s takeover it’s hit-or-miss at best. Some sites, like Facebook, aren’t strictly login-only but will require a login when you submit them to the Internet Archive. Both of these sites are used to publish statements of cultural significance, so it’s quite disheartening to think that they can’t be archived easily. (Update [5 June 2024]: I’d like to highlight Google Docs as well, because it’s another place where people publish culturally significant statements, and also because there’s an easy way to make it much easier to archive. Google Docs doesn’t require a login when you submit a document to the Internet Archive, but it often shows an error message that prevents you from reading the document. If you share something on Google Docs, consider using the “publish to Web” feature, which will make it much easier to archive. Note that this is not the same as simply sharing a link to a public document. The “publish to Web” URL will end in “/pubhtml” rather than “/edit”.) A blank or partial page with code to load the actual content: I remember when “progressive enhancement” was a thing and “people who turn off JavaScript in their browser” was a demographic that websites actually took into account. This idea seems to be dying off though, and the ability to archive pages is suffering as a result. The Internet Archive says it can run JavaScript to archive pages, but this doesn’t always work. Bluesky is a great example of this: You can view posts without logging in, but if you try to archive a public post all you get is a sort of “loading” screen (although the text of the post is in the source code at least). Its blog does this weird thing where you have to click in order for the content to show up. (Incidentally, archive.today handles both of these a lot better, so consider making it your first choice for archiving Bluesky posts.) A media player without the media: This is actually a specific case of the previous item. If you try to archive the page for a YouTube video, for example, all you’ll get is the player which uses JavaScript to load the actual video data. The Wayback Machine actually does have some YouTube videos archived, but those are few and far between and it’s clearly some extra process (although the process itself isn’t clear to me). I will point out that the Internet Archive’s video collections also have some YouTube videos, but these are separate from the Wayback Machine and not quite as simple to search for. Now, to be fair, a lot of the Web is still the kind that you can archive easily. But it’s not a coincidence that all of the examples I gave are from major social-media sites; many of them are particularly unsuitable for archiving. It’s frustrating that much of what happens online takes place on these platforms, without any good way to preserve it.

Tumblr

Sorry to say, archive.org is under a ddos attack. The data is not affected, but most services are unavailable.

We are working on it & will post updates in comments.

"If you shoot back a twelve-page rebuttal / With an indexed list of their lies / They'll laugh like demented hyenas / As engagement metrics rise / If you even admit their existence / Then you're falling for their trick / Let them rot in their lair as you starve them of air / It's bad on purpose to make you click."

astralcodexten.com/p/its-bad-o

Interesting thing I found out about : If you try to search the for an archived post on the bsky.app site, you'll get what looks like a blank page. However, the text and the author are still in the source code.

(Similarly, if you search for a more recent archive of one of their blog posts, the main content appears to be missing, but it's in the source code. But here for some reason the content shows up if you click somewhere on the page.)

Today, we filed our final brief in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the publishers’ lawsuit against our library. For four years we've been fighting for library rights—what our founder, @brewsterkahle, calls “a battle for the soul of libraries in the digital age.” blog.archive.org/2024/04/19/in

This whole Twitter thread illustrates the problem with the common practice of copying things on the Internet. More people need to learn about licenses, so they can, if they so choose, give explicit permission for others to share and reuse their work, rather than rely on inconsistent and uncertain social norms.

twitter.com/MadeiraSpotting/st

SXSW’s claim that the Austin for Palestine Coalition infringed its trademark fails because the graphics at issue are constitutionally-protected, non-commercial political parody that won’t create consumer confusion, EFF’s Cara Gagliano said. The Austin Chronicle has the story:
austinchronicle.com/daily/news

"But morality and social norms are supposed to be a different thing from law. In some spheres, it's more important to have hard-and-fast rules enforced by the government in a supposedly unbiased way; in others, it's more important to let communities make judgments using their own vague social norms."

"How Should We Think About Race And 'Lived Experience'?" by Scott Alexander in Astral Codex Ten astralcodexten.com/p/how-shoul

It's worth considering the specific case being examined here, but I wanted to highlight this broader point. I think it's similar to something I wrote about a few years ago collectedoverspread.tumblr.com

I've started calling this sort of thing "legalistic thinking," where people apply the strict standards found in law to discussions about morality.

I'm not sure how often checks this Mastodon account so I've sent them an e-mail about this.

Show thread
Show older
Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.